How does the proposition that “state intervention is criminogenic” “hold up” to scrutiny in labeling theory?
Chapter 9
The Variety of critical theory
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Introduction
Theories in this chapter give close attention to the types of current changes in social contexts that fuel critical thinking about the role of power, politics, and the economy
Development of a new criminology, emergence of left realism, cultural criminology (green and convict criminology), and ultra-realism
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Introduction
Once identified as “postmodern criminology”
Modernism, along with its emphasis on traditional scientific logic, directs efforts to fixing or changing individuals or instructions while neglecting the larger picture of the society as a whole
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Introduction
Postmodern thought is based on three key language-based propositions:
The centrality of language: Reality and our social actions are shaped by the written and spoken word.
Partial knowledge and provisional truth: The meanings and actions of daily life are structured by language that is not neutral.
Deconstruction, difference, and possibility: Postmodern methods emphasize the deconstruction of the written and spoken word in order to expose implicit and hidden assumptions located in specific narratives (e.g., the hidden and privileged political messages in certain court decisions).
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Introduction
Language-based arguments about constructing, decoding, and deconstruction have little to offer policy creation and implementation
Constitute needed pleas and plans for more tolerance and diversity
No single critical criminology
Rather, there are critical criminologies that have different origins, that use different methods, and that have diverse political beliefs
Share that the major sources of crime stem from the fact that unequal class, race/ethnic, and gender relations do in fact control society
Reject official/legal definitions and measurements of crime
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Looking Back at Early British and European Influences: Background: The New Criminology
Early on, the new criminology was influenced by the impact of the West Coast labeling theory centering around Howard Becker
The crisis of politics and culture refracted the internal problems of criminology, and thus, the new criminology in Britain emerged
The central problem was that a wholesale improvement in social conditions resulted not in a drop in crime but rather the reverse
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Looking Back at Early British and European Influences: Theoretical Arguments
The New Criminology
Central to The New Criminology’s early development was its objections to structural functionalism’s assumption that the social order was based on public consensus and traditional criminology’s overly deterministic treatment of crime
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Looking Back at Early British and European Influences: Theoretical Arguments
To overturn these assumptions, the first job was to demonstrate that conventional studies of crime were too narrowly entrenched in more general theories and paradigms that assumed that they had a monopoly on the correct, scientific, and deterministic understanding of human nature and social order
The task facing the new criminology was to demonstrate that conventional criminology was grounded in ideological constructs central to the policies of the state
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Looking Back at Early British and European Influences: Theoretical Arguments
The next task was to make crime the central focus of concern
The new criminology had to focus on the political nature of crime
For the new criminology, capitalism was an exploitative and alienating social order in which inequality was institutionalized by an elite ruling class
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Looking Back at Early British and European Influences: Theoretical Arguments
Under capitalism, criminal law is used by the state and the ruling class to secure the survival of the capitalist system
For the new criminology, crime would be defined as capitalist policies and interests that contribute to human misery and deprive people of their human potential
The violation of human rights was of central concern for the definition of crime
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Looking Back at Early British and European Influences: Critique of the New Criminology
Three specific problems were identified about The New Criminology:
The New Criminology treated criminological theories as if they existed in a scholarly limbo rather than in wider ideological currents rooted in material conditions of advanced capitalist societies
The writing style was closely akin to that of people with finely tuned interests in the field of criminology
It failed to present a cogent discussion of human nature and the social order
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Early Left Realism: The Theory
The changing political context of Britain came with the rise of the “New” Right
The 1979 Conservative victory ushered in a new governmental ideology that used as its major agenda the privatization of government industries and the placing of restrictions on welfare, national health care, and educational support
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Early Left Realism: The Theory
As the New Right’s governmental policies were being formulated and implemented, radical criminology recognized that its tide had turned
Radical criminology moved away from The New Criminology and developed a different approach to studying crime called left realism, which emphasizes the real aspects of crime
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Early Left Realism: The Theory
Central to left realism was a strong concern with the origins, nature, and impact of crime in the working class
This lead to a research agenda that included an accurate study of victimology
Women as crime victims
Racism
Police Brutality
Everyday crimes
Crime should be studied as problems people experience
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Early Left Realism: The Theory
Left realism advocated minimal sanctions for minor victimless crimes while calling for expanded social control for more harmful crimes, such as industrial pollution and corporate malfeasance
Strong interest in the class and power dimensions of crime causation and what can be done about it
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Early Left Realism: The Theory
Criticisms:
One issue is whether left realism has strayed too far from its roots in radical thought
Its emphasis on realistic approaches to the causes of crime come perilously close to advocating punitive control strategies
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Early Left Realism: Consequences of New Criminology/Left Realism
Help to lead the attack on traditional positivism
Radical and realist criminologies have contributed to a powerful critique of mechanical determinism, the social construction of statistics, emphasis on the endemic, and the largely invisible victimization of racist crime, domestic violence, and abuse of children
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Early Left Realism: Consequences of New Criminology/Left Realism
Policy Implications
Striking a balance between crimes of the powerful and the realities of street crime
Democratic-based reforms
Minimal incarceration
Reentry programs
Democratized forms of social control
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The New Criminology Revisited: A Shift in Context
During the late 1990s, two events occurred that provided an opportunity to reevaluate the impact of the new criminology
A historic shift in Britain’s politics and the beginning of a new and different political philosophy
The publication of The New Criminology Revisited
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The New Criminology Revisited: A Shift in Context
Tony Blair
Elected as prime minister May 1, 1997
Campaigned for what was termed the “New Labor” Party and promised a national transition to a new Britain
Supported community inclusiveness and reform
Focused on the modernization of health care, the reduction of Britain’s runaway welfare bill, human rights, globalization, poverty, the devolution of Scotland and Wales, and a more cooperative relationship with the European Union
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The New Criminology Revisited: A Shift in Context
New Labor’s approach to crime, according to some critics, was soon equally as authoritarian, punitive, and conservative as that of the Tories
Privatizing public service had become Blair’s touchstone since taking office
England’s incarcerated population continued to grow under the New Labor
New Labor’s tough on crime policies often failed to attack the causes of crime
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The New Criminology Revisited: A Shift in Context
Crime and the processes of criminalization are embedded in the core structures of society
The sole and precise aim of new criminology is improving the human condition
The new criminology was and still is not committed to corrections as supported by establishment criminology a la administrative criminology
The new criminology is wedded to social change
The new criminology aims to deconstruct criminological theories in an attempt to construct a social theory of crime and deviance
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The New Criminology Revisited: A Shift in Context
Since the original The New Criminology, feminist perspectives had become more developed and central to critical criminology
The Marxist heritage had been refined and redefined
Thus, some of the ideas developed in The New Criminology Revisited were forerunners of much that captured the imagination of today’s cultural criminologist
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Left Realism Today
For several years, interest in left realism grew considerably as one of the fields of inquiry under the broader category of critical criminology
Left realists argue that the crimes of the powerless result largely from inequalities inherent in the social structure, the crimes of the disenfranchised--in their opinion--must first be recognized before an egalitarian society based on social justice principles can develop
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Left Realism Today
The bulk of left realists’ theoretical work addresses street crime, draconian means of policing, and violence against women in heterosexual relationships
The vitality of left realism today is also found in its rich discussions of what some critics have called the public irrelevance and marginality of orthodox criminology
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Left Realism Today
Conventional criminology had, despite its accumulated theoretical and empirical heft, distressingly little impact on the course of public policy toward crime and criminal justice
Criminology had become isolated from such debates because criminologists do a lousy job of educating the public about what they in fact know about what to do about crime
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Left Realism Today
Matthews proposed engaging in theoretically informed interventions employing an appropriate methodology
Offers a refashioned realist criminology that prioritizes the role of theory around concepts such as class, the state, and structure
Using these ideas, he argues, coupled with the recognition that a method of analysis that stresses the meaning of crime (instead of trends) to victims and offenders, is an essential component that would link theory to effective intervention
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Left Realism Today
DeKeseredy and Schwartz offer a new left realism subcultural theory that places gender at the forefront
Laissez-faire economic policies have caused a relatively new assault on workers that has helped make North America categorically unequal
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Left Realism Today
Left realism has moved toward realist criminology “that . . . attempt[s] to avoid some of the pitfalls that have beset positivist criminology, on one hand, and idealist forms of criminology on the other”
Fundamental to the realist approach’s understanding of crime and pursuit of justice is the literature known as critical realism
A philosophical of science perspective that is situated within modern philosophy that seeks a better way to find the truth
Gives special attention to the three broad theoretical traditions of positivism, interpretivism, and constructivism
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Left Realism Today
Critical realism provides a basis for developing an integrated and coherent approach, “one that can more effectively link theory, method, and policy”
At the heart of critical realism is the now old argument about the shortcomings of positivism and empiricism as well as some of the limitations of interpretive and social constructionist perspectives
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Left Realism Today
Seven points of agreement between realist and cultural criminology
An agreement that a greater understanding of the cultural dimensions of attitude and behavior is critical to the formation of effective policy
Each argues that interventions are likely to work only to the extent that they connect with the sensibilities and propensities of those to whom they are directed
That both perspectives express deep reservations about the use of inferential statistics and the positivistic tendency to turn complex social relations into dry mathematical formulas.
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Left Realism Today
Seven points of agreement between realist and cultural criminology
That both approaches have a commitment to naturalism and engaging in the lived experiences those studied because there is a need to establish a congruity of meaning between researchers and their subject (combined with a need to understand their experiences, emotions, and aspirations)
Each shares a mutual distrust of overly rationalized conceptions of man as found in rational choice and routine activity theory
The approaches agree that forms of regulations themselves can contribute to an offence in question, meaning in part that the nature of crime and deviance is not reducible to individual motivation or opportunity but is created to some extend by modes of regulation directed toward it
And a commitment to the development of a critical or radical criminology (although there remain some differences in what is critical about these two approaches) that problematizes the notions of crime and deviance.
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Left Realism Today: Late Modernity and Globalization
Impact of the economic and cultural globalization was the creation of widespread resentment and tensions within the First World and internationally
Globalization nonetheless exacerbated “both relative deprivation and crises of identity”
In the present period of late modernity, boundaries and categories of behavior and culture associated with the social embeddedness found in traditional and modern societies have become blurred and confused
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Changing Social Context: 2015–2018
In May 2015, PM Cameron restated the commitment to shrink size of the state, cut government spending, including social welfare to reduce the deficit in Britain
Loss of welfare safety nets, privatization of the probation service, and cuts in prison staff that were accompanied by increases in occasional prison riots, suicides, and violence in prisons
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Changing Social Context: 2015–2018
England had higher rates of imprisonment than any other European country
Increased privatization of probation services in the country
Brexit
Concerns of national identity and issues of race, political discourse, immigration, and religion
Secure borders and immigration
Elements of race and sexual exploitation
Increase in anti-immigrant sentiment, xenophobia, and hate crimes
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Changing Social Context: 2015–2018
Lammy review reported that overt racial prejudice was declining but “covert and unconscious or implicit bias was becoming more apparent”
Sexual abuse by police officers becoming a large-scale issue
Culture of denial
Dehumanized and brutalized the public
Failure to pursue domestic abusers
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Changing Social Context: 2015–2018
After Brexit, Britain faces a period of uncertainty
Harder for transnational cooperation
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Early Cultural Criminology
Based on the argument that crime and crime control cannot be understood apart from the domain of culture
Crimes are constructed out of symbolic interactions among groups and people and are shaped by ongoing conflicts over their meaning and perceptions
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Early Cultural Criminology
The meaning of crime and criminality is contested and not agreed upon
Rather, it is the result of complex processes “through which illicit subcultures, the mass media, political authorities, criminal justice professionals, and others contest the meaning of crime and criminality”
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Early Cultural Criminology
Argues that a model is needed that can account for a world so saturated with media technology and media images that distinctions between a crime and its mediated image is often lost
Critiques the methods often used by conventional criminology and offers alternatives
Stress the human dynamics of surprise, ambiguity, and such things as anger--factors that are often ignored by conventional criminology as well as by the media
Use methods informed by an ethnographic sensibility
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Early Cultural Criminology: Consequences of Early Cultural Criminology
Cultural criminology is charged with using a definition of culture that is based on political motivations leading to confusion about the meaning of culture and subculture
There is a lack of understanding and engagement with the classic debates on the meaning of culture found social anthropology
Where is culture if there is no distinction between psychological, economic, political, and geographical forces that impinge on experiencing crime individually or the patterns of crime over time
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Early Cultural Criminology: Consequences of Early Cultural Criminology
Hall and Winlow propose instead an approach that places crime within the context of increasing instrumentalism in consumer culture and the breakdown of the pseudo-pacification process
Weakening strength of the contemporary culture to hold together the collective social solidarity
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Early Cultural Criminology: Consequences of Early Cultural Criminology
It is not the material aspects of consumer goods that provokes desire and ambition, but rather its social symbolism and its power to identity and meaning in what has been identified as liquid modernity
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Early Cultural Criminology: Consequences of Early Cultural Criminology
Cultural criminology uses the destabilizing conditions of late modernity to study how populations position themselves
The enemy is the state and rational choice theorists
Cultural criminology seeks to dissolve conventional understandings of crime regardless of whether they are specific theories of the institutionalized discipline of criminology itself
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Cultural Criminology Today
Commitment to studying a triadic framework of topics that included the construction of the phenomenological meaning of crime and risk-taking, power and existential accounts of crime and punishment and control
Hayward argued that it would be beneficial for criminology to break down the barriers between quantitative and qualitative methodology
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Cultural Criminology Today
Hayward focused on the term resistance
Ranges from full-scale revolutions to repressive formal state-sponsored regulations
Need to more fully analyze state formations and state agents
Crime mapping has focused on how to make “top-down” crime maps more culturally informed and thus better able to interpret and interpolate phenomena such as affect, fear, and parafunctionality
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Cultural Criminology Today
Cultural criminology has in some ways matured
Continue to trace the damage caused by late capitalism at the macro level and are equally committed to documenting the wide sweep of transcontinental capitalism amidst the most local of situations and common everyday transgressions
Main achievement is the cluster of ideas known as the “crime-consumerism nexus”
Interdisciplinary in nature
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Cultural Criminology Today
Seven main themes that comprise contemporary consumer culture
Insatiability of desire and perpetual dissatisfaction: This feature of consumer culture is normalized and essential to survival and actively cultivated by it. Its relevance for criminology is its flipside--a constant sense of unfulfillment, dissatisfaction, and disillusionment that might contribute to a perceived sense of “consumer deficit” that may be bridged by street robbery and shoplifting.
New forms of “hyper strain”: The thinking here is reminiscent of Merton’s strain theory. However, the criminal behavior is qualitatively different. In a consumer culture, the response to strain is more expressive than instrumental because the deprivation is one of identity that can derive from possessing desired products. In other words, products have come to bestow identity on individuals.
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Cultural Criminology Today
Seven main themes that comprise contemporary consumer culture
Engagement with risk: This theme is about the tension created by consumer culture’s emphasis on the desire for excitement and the mundane and overly controlled modern society with its encroachment of surveillance and the boring drudgery of low-wage employment. Under these cultural conditions individuals may engage in risk--street fighting or graffiti writing--to enhance their sense of self or a semblance of control in their lives.
Instant gratification/impulsivity: In addition to the creating insatiability, consumer culture’s bombardment of stimuli cultivates a desire for immediate, rather than delayed gratification that fundamentally distorts our experience of temporality which is reduced to a “series of pure and unrelated presents.” Consumer culture’s constant emphasis on the “buy now” language of advertising is sustained by the massive expansion of credit facilities.
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Cultural Criminology Today
Seven main themes that comprise contemporary consumer culture
Infantilization/“adultification” of maturation: Newly added to consumer criminology of panoramic criminological imagination, work within this theme explores how ‘consumerism as a cultural ethos’ contributes to two developments. Firstly, it depreciates the nature of adulthood and the roles and responsibilities typically associated stages of people’s lives. Secondly, it encourages very young teenagers to engage in adult behavior involving sexual activity, drugs, criminality, and so on. In other words, it cultivates young people to make adult decisions while also encouraging adults to act like children.
Green-cultural criminology: Also, recently included in consumer criminology interests, green-cultural criminology exposes the exploitative ecological practices associated with globalized consumerist way of life.
Convict-cultural criminology. Added because it examines how insights from those who personally experienced coercive correctional conditions can illumine both the nature of state oppression and resistance to it through more humanitarian means.
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Green Criminology: Background
Also identified as “environmental” and “conservation criminology” combines criminology, public health, and rights, including “those of humans and other species”
Refers to the study of environmental harm, environmental laws, and environmental regulation
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Green Criminology: Background
Green criminology studies crimes included in the illegal trade of endangered species, illegal harvesting, irresponsible disposal of toxic materials, ecological consequences of technologies, crimes associated with the aftermath of natural disasters
No single theory but generally includes a specific concern with environmental issues, social justice, ecological consciousness, the destructive dimensions of global capitalism
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Green Criminology: Environmental Justice
Two major ideas:
Distributions of environments in terms of access to natural resources in defined geographical areas
How social practices and environmental hazards impact specific populations defined by class, occupation, gender, age, and ethnicity
Distinguishes between environmental issues that affect everyone and those with a disproportionate impact on specific individuals
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Green Criminology: Ecological Justice
Refers to the relationship of human beings generally to the rest of the natural world
Environment has intrinsic value, and other species have the right to live free from torture, abuse, and destruction of habitat
Of central concern is how humans interact with particular environments and the risks to everything that comes in contact with them (humans are part of a larger ecosystem)
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Green Criminology: Ecological Justice
Philosophical differences in terms of the value put on the interests of humans and on the environment
Deep green and biocentric perspectives see diseases, famines, and so on as nature’s way of population control
An act of omission is not criminal if it benefits the biosphere generally
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Green Criminology: Ecological Justice
Progressive approach
Different types of social power
Humans do not affect ecology equally and environmental degradation occurs within the context of the political economy
Criminality is related to the “exploitation of both the environment and humans by those who control the means of production”
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Green Criminology: Animal Rights
Includes speciesism: the practice of discrimination and prejudice against nonhuman animals
Animals are seen in primarily instrumental terms (as pets, as food, as resources) in environmental criminology, or categorized in mainly anthropomorphic terms (such as “wildlife,” “fisheries”) which allows humans to represent animals has a non-inclusive “other”
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Green Criminology: Animal Rights
Tensions exist between animal rights and environmental justice, and animal rights and ecological justice approaches
Mosquito example
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Convict Criminology: Background: Primarily an American Contribution
John Irwin was the first convict to openly use his criminal experiences to enter academe
In the late 1990s, the convicts-turned-academics had enough critical mass, energy, and determination to start what is now called “convict criminology”
By 2003, convict criminology was self-declared as a new school within criminology
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Convict Criminology: Background: Primarily an American Contribution
This perspective grew out of six interrelated movements:
Theoretical developments in criminology
Writings in victimology
Writings in constitutive criminology
The failure of the prisoners’ rights movement
The authenticity of insider perspectives
The growing importance of ethnography
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Convict Criminology: Background: Primarily an American Contribution
Central to convict criminologists’ claims is that radical and critical perspectives often have remained the intellectual products of the well-meaning yet privileged, with only minimal reference and relevance to the victims of the criminal justice machine
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Convict Criminology: Background: Primarily an American Contribution
Its humanitarian orientation encompasses a kind of “back-to-basics” criminology, one that listens to the people on the receiving end of criminal justice
Has empowered some ex-cons, convict criminology has in turn given voice to prison workers close to the ground in prison administration and prison research
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Convict Criminology: Consequences of the “New School of Convict Criminology”
It is not at all clear that convict criminology is doing anything new that has not been done in the past 45 years with the exception that about half of the contributors embrace the identity of “ex-con”
While the convict story from convicts’ perspectives is interesting and informative, it risks having more in common with journalism and novels/memoirs than with academic criminology
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Convict Criminology: Consequences of the “New School of Convict Criminology”
This approach previously struggled to negotiate a position of critical relevance
Convict criminology has created what appears to be somewhat of a sustained presence within criminology and the media
Sits at the crossroads of activism and academics
Continues to generate interest and contribute to scholarly activism in the United States and United Kingdom and fits well as a voice of the oppressed within cultural criminology perspective
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New Directions in Criminological Theory: Death and Birth of New Ideas
The first National Deviancy Conference in Britain (1968) proved to be the beginning of theoretical and empirical work that “changed the character of British criminology”
Conference was revived in 2011 and met again in 2014
“Reinvigorated critical/radical criminology to take the lead in explaining and articulating a challenge to the staggering range of injustices, inequalities and harms that are an unavoidable by-product of a transformed postmodern and thoroughly globalized capitalism”
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New Directions in Criminological Theory: Hall’s New Perspective
Steve Hall’s (2012) Theorizing Crime and Deviance: A New Perspective
Argument is that contemporary criminology suffers from a largely self-constructed “etiological crisis”
Does not answer the question of what creates the conditions in which rates of harmful crime increase to elicit the seemingly inevitable punitive reaction orchestrated by neoliberal government
Argues Western criminology places blame for crime on something to be explained that is consistent and “affirms political and governmental projects of the day” (e.g., free will, socialization, poverty, and social inequality) and left the field open for dominating conservative criminology
Criminology generally has less intellectual vitality than it did prior to the 1970s
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New Directions in Criminological Theory: Hall’s New Perspective
Recognized that crime and the culture of consumerism are two sides of the same coin under contemporary capitalistic neoliberalism where inequality is deeply embedded
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New Directions in Criminological Theory: Hall’s New Perspective
See this inequality with the “1%” issue in the United States
Argues that the unequal distribution of income in the United States is attributable to governmental action
Due to this, criminological theory needs to investigate psychological, historical, and sociocultural motives for crime and recognize prior liberal arguments to reduce crime through integrating marginalized groups clashes with prevailing socioeconomic relations
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New Directions in Criminological Theory: Hall’s New Perspective
Called for reviving some Continental philosophies
Where principle of universal ethics and politics should find its way into criminological theory
However, the future of criminology is not as hospitable to theory and free enquiry as it once was
Universities today have fallen under neoliberal market forces requiring them to serve the economy and produce policy relevant research publications
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New Directions in Criminological Theory: Hall’s New Perspective
Criminology has been transformed in part by the increasingly commodification of education and the state’s various wars on crime since the 1980s
It has become a fragmented discipline that has lost its sociological soul
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New Directions in Criminological Theory: Ultra-Realism Today
Central claim is that the empirical world of crime, disorder, and the commission of harm are but symptoms not in themselves causative and suspended above deeper forces, processes, and structures which contribute to and influence our interaction with the social
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New Directions in Criminological Theory: Ultra-Realism Today
Hall and Winlow: Revitalizing Criminological Theory: Toward a New Ultra-Realism
Individuals are not inherently good or immoral but they identify with a symbolic order
Signs, symbols, rules, and values that people use to make convincing or believable sense of their lives
Difficult for people to create and sustain a sense of identification unless they are fully immersed in consumerism
In an effort to cultivate consumer identities, many have no choice but to immerse themselves in the circuits of consumption
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New Directions in Criminological Theory: Jock Young
Central and persistent theme in his intellectual journeys--new criminology, left realism, and cultural criminology--has been those groups marginalized by capitalism
Contributed not only to left reality but to cultural criminology
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The New European Criminology: Contributions and Context
In the aftermath of WWII, two powerful developments emerged that were to have a great impact on the developing new criminology
Unemployment and related social problems were an outgrowth of a major shift in the economic market
A flood of immigrants posed a threat to European harmonization
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The New European Criminology: Policy Update
Ranks of the working poor continue to grow
Immigration remains at the center of many of the social, cultural, economic, and political debates in some if not all European countries
Populist rise in the United States and Europe and anti-immigration movement
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The New European Criminology: Abolitionism
The new European criminology had two main objectives:
To maintain an exchange of criminological communications and comparisons across Europe that, rather than contribute to free market liberalism, would contribute to developing a European public sphere that emphasizes a sharing of experiences
To develop a European criminological community that would “help develop an understanding of trends and concerns in Europe”
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The New European Criminology: Abolitionism
No concrete definition of abolitionism
A central tenet of general abolitionism is that punishment is never justified
The criminal justice system as a whole is a social problem that should be dismantled and replaced with alternative dispute resolution
Restricted abolitionism deals with the elimination of specific aspects of the criminal justice system
Prisons are a form of violence and should be destroyed because they reflect a social ethos of violence and degradation
Prisons should be replaced with democratic community control
Most success in capital punishment
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The New European Criminology: Consequences of Abolitionism
Abolitionism has been criticized for being imprecise and for lacking a well grounded theoretical opposition to punishment
Has a vision without a strategy
Does not have practical plans for dealing with dangerous predatory criminals
Abolitionism is still a perspective that is structured primarily by analogies and metaphors
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Conclusion
Critical criminology stands outside mainstream criminology and outside the structures of power in society
The central theme that informs these diverse critical perspectives is that official, legitimate, and hegemonic realities should not be taken for granted
Existing realities are not inevitable but are socially and politically constructed
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